


Meditations in an Emergency

by sorrymom



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F, Neon Genesis Evangelion AU, an elegant mess, friends to lovers to redacted, this is not just for weebs!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:20:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25701979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sorrymom/pseuds/sorrymom
Summary: Today’s Angel is beautiful. Momo always thinks they are— these impossible, towering creatures that move like light in a still pond. She almost hates to kill them.aka samo genesis evangelion
Relationships: Hirai Momo/Minatozaki Sana, minor Im Nayeon/Yoo Jeongyeon - Relationship
Comments: 9
Kudos: 55





	Meditations in an Emergency

**Author's Note:**

> evangelion is more of a setting than anything. i really hope that even if you haven’t seen the show you’ll read it bc it’s like. not about robots. but neither was evangelion and i can’t convince people to watch it. i’m not a salesperson i’m a writer

The cicadas are crying for love in the ruins of Toyko-III.

Momo’s sneakers scrape against the pavement. Her sky-blue skirt laughs in the wind as stormclouds trouble above.

She got on the wrong train, then off at the wrong stop.

Every time Momo runs away she comes to the same place. Her sore legs move with muscle memory, with tired automation. The same vending machines lined up at the station, canned coffees glittering behind the glass. She bought one today, drinks it as that invisible string of habit threads her through the empty alleys, past the boarded-up stores, the crumbled shrines. Every time she passes a payphone she thumbs the yen in her pocket.

It’s enough to call Sana. It’s enough to say run away with me.

Sana would laugh. She would say come back. Make me dinner.

She would, evidently, have already called Nayeon. The captain’s white sports car is parked crooked in front of Momo’s final destination— the ghost of a church on the corner. Nayeon is leaned against the hood, head tilted back as she empties the last of a Yebusi.

“You’re driving,” she calls brightly across the street, spinning a keyring around her finger.

Momo doesn’t remember how to get back to headquarters as well as she remembers how to get away from it.

Nayeon has her bare feet up against the dash, sunglasses halfway down as she points out the exits, barks out orders for merging and lefts and rights.

“You could’ve made that,” Nayeon sighs when Momo slows to a stop in front of a yellow light.

She grips the steering wheel tighter. Sana told her once that the way traffic signals are supposed to work is that there are censors beneath the streets, and the weight tells the lights when to switch. But Tokyo-III is basically abandoned, and now the lights work on their own logic. Their guesses. Their memories of the cars that used to careen down the boulevards, all the pedestrian ghosts.

“Don’t wanna go back?” Nayeon reaches into the back to pop open the cooler hidden behind the seat. “Me neither.”

This is Nayeon’s style as a handler. More of a big sister than a boss, always frowning with perfect sympathy and smiling with perfect understanding, even as she tightens the leash around her wrist.

Sana says she’s just doing her job.

Momo agrees but she likes to argue sometimes, just to hear Sana’s voice pitch up. She asks, ‘what kind of person does a job like this?’

And Sana says, ‘a person who is scared.’

Rain scatters over the windshield.

“Sorry,” Momo mumbles. She almost means it.

Nayeon flashes that patented forgiveness smile over the edge of the beer can. “I’m used to it.”

“Me being sorry?”

“And covering for you.”

The stoplight turns blue.

Momo met Nayeon when she was thirteen.

It’s a crowded hangar, men in sunglasses muttering into their earpieces, jets wailing across the tarmac outside. Momo is sitting in the shadow of her Evangelion unit’s detached shin.

She’s trying to look busy, fiddling with the zipper on her backpack, frowning down at her shoes. She unties them, then double knots. Again when a group of men with guns strapped across their chests pass by.

She hasn’t seen guns before without the buffer of a TV screen. She hasn’t been on an airplane.

Nayeon squats beside her. She’s not an adult but she looks like it with bright red lipstick and a popped collar. She shakes a canned coffee and holds it out, like Momo is a stray dog that just needs a treat.

“I’m not allowed to drink that,” she mumbles.

“Says who?”

When Nayeon opens the can it’s as loud as a bullet. She traces a smiley face on the condensation.

Momo ends up drinking the coffee. It’s sweet and thin and comfortable, and Nayeon sits beside her as the forklifts scavenge at the Evangelion behind them.

When they’re on the plane, Nayeon keeps a steady hand on her knee. She gives Momo a piece of gum when her ears start to pop from the pressure.

“I’m going to take care of you,” Nayeon says as the city’s glittering skyline juts out of the ground below them.

For the first few years, Momo lived with Nayeon in a cramped two-bedroom apartment just offbase. Nayeon didn’t always spend the night, didn’t like to cook, didn’t like to clean.

They were two kids playing house. Sometimes Nayeon was the reluctant mother and Momo was the angry teenager, arguing about schoolwork while the world was burning. Sometimes they were sisters, making up drinking games while they watched reruns, Nayeon taking swigs from a golden beer and Momo mimicking with a Coca-Cola. Then there were the other times, the confusing ones— Nayeon fresh out of the shower, swaddled in a towel and wet hair fishhooked on her back, teasing Momo for blushing. Nayeon talking about her on-and-off girlfriend while a dumb little monster curled up in Momo’s chest.

“I would marry Jeongyeon,” Nayeon says one night. She’s drunk and Momo is sixteen, taking tentative sips of her inaugural beer. “If we weren’t doomed.”

By then, Sana was there. Also sixteen, also stupid, also beautiful. She’s in the armchair beside the TV because she prefers to watch Nayeon and Momo on the couch over whatever is flashing onscreen. Her eyes glitter like firelight.

Momo gulps around the sour taste in her mouth.

Later, after they put Nayeon to bed, Momo and Sana stand out on the balcony. The midnight air is still and heavy over their shoulders, the silence stretching on as long as the light from the stars.

“Do you want to walk me home,” Sana asks finally with a well-placed yawn for effect.

It’s half a joke. Her apartment is just two floors down, next to Mina’s.

“Sure.”

The stairs are wet from rain, and Sana’s grip on her arm is almost painful. When they get to the door, Sana shuffles. “Do you want to come in?”

“Um. Why?”

Sana presses her lips together in a tight line. “We could have another drink.”

“It tastes bad.”

Sana unlocks the door. Sana says goodnight. Sana says don’t keep breaking your own heart.

It’s different now.

Momo has her own apartment. It was her seventeenth birthday gift from Nayeon, a key taped to the back of an unsigned card.

“You’re all grown up now,” Nayeon says, beaming as she watches Momo unlock the door. It’s on the same floor as Sana and Mina’s, an identical floor plan— narrow kitchen, laundry machine in the living room, windows with jailhouse blinds.

Sana is in the empty bedroom, hair tied in a bun, painting the walls a sunset pink.

It’s different now.

That first night, they lay on two air mattresses beside each other and stare at the unfamiliar ceiling.

“Are you nervous about being alone,” Sana asks.

Momo isn’t sure. She’s felt lonely even with Nayeon, with her singing in the shower and stubbing her toe every time she got up in the night to check the locks. All the noise didn’t really amount to comfort. Not always.

“It’ll be nice to have some quiet.”

“You’ll hate it soon.” In the darkness all Momo can see is the hazy outline of Sana’s body as she turns underneath the blanket. “I’ve always lived alone and I hate it.”

“That’s because you watch horror movies.”

It’s one of ten thousand things Momo doesn’t understand about Sana. There’s already so much to be afraid of. There are Angels on Earth, but Sana still wants to terrify herself with dark figures in the corners of rooms, ghosts and monsters and people gone mad with pain. She’s seen Sana’s ritual— drapes pulled over the windows, all the lights out in her apartment, volume up so Sana can hear every breath before it crackles into a scream. Momo cocooned herself on the couch, watching Sana’s face instead.

“Momo?”

“Mm.”

“Let’s keep talking.”

Momo says okay, but she can’t think of anything to say. Not anything she wants to say tonight.

“Momo?”

“Sorry.” And then, “I can’t really think of anything.”

“I need to—“ Sana’s voice is brittle. “I need to know you’re alive right now.”

That was the first night they slept together. Not in the way Nayeon would mean it— not with kissing and shock-stopped hearts. It’s just Sana draping her arm over Momo’s waist, pulling her back until she’s cradled in the sickle-curve of Sana’s body. Momo tucks her face against Sana’s neck so she can feel each exhale and inhale pull like a tide over her skin.

All the ghosts stay in their corners. All the dreams are of a sharkless sea.

Tonight, Momo parks Nayeon’s car and heads up to her apartment without another word.

The sun has set. The cicadas have stopped singing. She unlocks her door and collapses into bed.

In the morning Sana is there beside her, eyes open and bruised.

“I’m mad at you,” Momo creaks, turning over.

Sana presses her lips to Momo’s shoulder. It’s not exactly a kiss. “I’m mad at _you_.”

“You didn’t have to tell Nayeon exactly where I was.”

Meaning: you should have run away too. You should have been the one waiting for me.

“Was she mean about it?”

“No,” Momo groans, pulling the blankets up higher. She wants another barrier between her and the heat of Sana’s hands.

“Good.” Now it’s a kiss against the back of her neck. Momo’s skin prickles a lightning strike down her back. “What do you want for breakfast?”

It’s an undefined thing. It’s a sometimes thing.

Like sometimes Sana sleeps over. Sometimes she climbs from her balcony to Momo’s and knocks on the glass door. Sometimes she breathes condensation against it and draws a frown because Momo hasn’t told her that it’s always left unlocked.

Like sometimes Sana kisses her neck, her knuckles, her knees. Sometimes Sana laces their fingers together on the train, at school, in the moments when the alarms at headquarters sound and they are milliseconds away from being packaged up in the EVA units and ordered to pull the Angels’ hearts out with mechanical fists.

Like sometimes Momo thinks she’s alive just for Sana and Sana is alive just for her. Like sometimes this apocalypse is just the universe’s invention so that they could end up in the same city, in the same building, in the same locker room.

Sana is sealed up in her skintight plugsuit, tying her hair up, a bobby pin in her teeth.

“You should let me braid it next time,” Momo says. She made the decision early on to cut her hair so it stops just short of her shoulders, but Sana has always kept her’s long. Which is nice, actually. It gives Momo something to do, something to touch on the nights when she can’t think of anything to say but wants Sana to stay anyways.

“Next time,” Sana promises.

Momo meets Sana on a battleship in the Pacific when they’re both fourteen.

Momo had always believed certain things about herself. That she was shy, that she was nervous by nature, that she wasn’t really a talker. She believed those things and Nayeon had confirmed them affectionately.

Momo meets Sana and she meets a second version of herself. Sana’s Momo. She never felt like she was funny or clever or interesting but Sana talks to her for hours on the side of the ship, her sunflower yellow dress fluttering in the wind and inching closer until their bare shoulders brush.

“You seem older,” Momo interrupts when Sana starts talking about moths. They’ve gone through most of the animal kingdom over the course of the afternoon. “Like Nayeon.”

“You seem just like you are.” She says it like praise.

The blood of an Angel is reddening in the sea, acid scent buzzing on the knife-point of the breeze.

“Do you ever wonder how people see you?”

Momo breathes in the salt. “Not really.”

She doesn’t like to look in a mirror. She catches her reflection sometimes— in polished glass of the headquarter vending machines, the windows of passing trains, in the bathwater. It’s always a painful realignment, like snapping a dislocated shoulder back into place. Oh, that’s what I look like. That’s what they have to look at.

“That’s healthy,” Sana says sagely. “I’ve always hoped people think I’m pretty.”

Momo's eyes flick down.

“What else do you think is pretty?” Sana is glowing. “For reference.”

“Rain.” Momo is trying to remember anything she’s seen before this. “Rain when it’s sunny out. And streetlamps at night.” And then, in a whisper, “Nayeon.”

“She is,” Sana agrees.

It’s the first secret. It’s the only secret that matters until there’s another one.

The inside of an EVA unit is, at first, a dark and quiet place.

Momo fiddles with the controls, responding to Nayeon’s typical test questions with simple yeses. Everything looks fine. Everything is responding correctly. Everything will be okay.

The cabin then floods with hazy orange fluid, the LCL. It tastes like blood and once she is used to the blood it tastes like nothing.

“Okay, shoot ‘em up,” Nayeon says over the comm unit.

Today’s Angel is beautiful. Momo always thinks they are— these impossible, towering creatures that move like light in a still pond. She almost hates to kill them.

Mina is in her unit, flanking to the south, and Sana is beside her, running through the streets of Tokyo-III. It feels like a playground. They’re taller than most of the buildings. They leave their footprints in the gravel like it’s as soft as sand.

“We graduate next week,” Sana says. There’s a stream of her projected at the top of Momo’s screen, flashing a grin up at the camera.

There’s also an image of Mina, face blank as ever.

“Focus,” Nayeon scolds over the comms.

Momo knows it’s different in the command center. There are sirens blaring and screens flashing and a hundred people panicking while Nayeon feels like the only thing standing between the Angel and the death of the Earth.

But Momo and Sana, and maybe Mina, feel powerful.

They are nearly invincible.

They are the last gods.

“Beautiful,” Sana says when she slits a knife through the center of the Angel and its orange blood fills the streets beneath them.

“It’s not dead,” Mina mutters, voice frayed with static.

Momo unhooks her own knife from her unit’s pauldron. She kneels over the Angel. It’s collapsed like a dress in a gutter. The heart of the thing— but it’s not a heart, it’s just a sphere— is in the mess of its guts. All it takes is one hard jab and it bursts.

She can hear the applause from the command center over her ear piece. Sana is gleaming. Mina’s face twists into a smile.

“See,” Nayeon is shouting happily. “Easy! Nothing to worry about!”

NERV doesn’t know how many Angels there will be. They only know how many there have been.

Momo doesn’t know why the Angels keep coming. She doesn’t know what they want.

“It’s not that important,” Nayeon had said once. They were out at a celebration dinner— Nayeon’s promotion to captain— with a few of the co-workers that Nayeon could stomach.

“It is important,” Jeongyeon chides. “But we can’t tell you.”

Nayeon’s mouth can’t decide between smiling and grimacing. “Don’t be so honest,” she hisses.

Jeongyeon’s elbows are on the table. She leans forward and Momo thinks she’s going to tell her all the secrets of the universe. Jeongyeon seems like that— smart and kind and uncaring about protocol. “Do you know a lot about eels?”

Momo looks down at her plate. “Uh…not more than most people?”

“ _Jeongie_ ,” Nayeon warns. Momo wonders if they’ve been fighting again.

“It’s fine.” Jeongyeon’s voice is lower beneath the clatter of utensils in the restaurant, the hum of other, easier conversations around them. “She should know at least a little.”

Momo suspects this is some big joke at her expense, which is sometimes how it feels to be around Nayeon and Jeongyeon together. “About eels?”

“No, no, it’s—“ Jeongyeon huffs. “For a long time, no one knew where eels came from. Like obviously they’re _here_ , but no one knew where they mated, or how, and people tried to track them. All they could find out is that every single eel on Earth leaves and goes to this one specific part of the ocean, thousands of miles from where they lived. And then they die.”

“Okay,” Momo says. “But why?”

Nayeon’s hand tightens around a butter knife.

“Because that’s their home.”

Every week, the pilots run sync tests with the EVA units.

Momo is first because she’s the oldest and, openly, Nayeon’s favorite.

The cockpit fills with LCL and Momo breathes it in deep and slow.

Sana once told her about haloclines, places where salt and fresh water hit up against each other. ‘Sometimes the divers think it’s a pocket of air in the caves because it looks so odd,’ Sana had said with that look Momo loved, self-serious, too loud for a room with just the two of them in it. ‘People drown like that.’

An alarm is blaring.

“Momo,” the captain barks over the comms. “Your sync rate is falling.”

It’s a delicate chemistry to control an EVA. Ideally, pilots are calm, overpowering the mechanical muscles and hissing pipes to force the machine to behave. There’s no better word for it. Sometimes Momo wonders if they’re alive too. When she asked Jeongyeon, Nayeon had interrupted with a loud laugh.

When she asked Sana, Sana said, if a snake has two heads does it have two souls?

Momo had chewed on that for a while, and days later said—

“Momo, you need to get a grip.” It’s Jeongyeon’s voice now in her ear.

“I’m fine,” Momo says.

“Think happy thoughts.”

It’s not a good order. Momo isn’t sure what’s happy.

Rain in sunlight.

A puddle with iridescent oil spilled through its center.

A cold can of coffee.

“We’re at less than ten-percent,” a technician says over the comm.

“Alright, we’re cutting the power before this thing freaks out.”

The lights go off.

The LCL is heavy in Momo’s lungs.

She is alone in metal womb again, intensified by breathing.

Only Mina is in the locker room.

“Sana already went for her test?” Momo tries to be friendly, but this is what she always gets— Mina glancing up, flushing even from this diminutive attention.

Mina nods.

“I don’t know what happened during mine,” Momo says conversationally, pulling the skintight plug suit off, around the odd angles of her elbows and hipbones. “I don’t know if you—“

“You’re unstable.”

A laugh unsettles from Momo’s chest. It’s not true. That’s one thing Nayeon and Sana and Jeongyeon have always told her— she’s steady. She’s a rock.

“You ran away two weeks ago.”

It wasn’t really. Not in the way people pack suitcases, open up bank accounts, drive and drive until everything is too distant to turn back to.

If Momo wanted to run away, truly wanted, she’d have to convince Sana to go with her. Which is one of the impossible questions between them.

“I got lost.”

Mina says nothing.

An earthworm’s heart is called an arch.

“Isn’t that beautiful,” Sana asks sleepily. Her head is propped on an open encyclopedia like a pillow.

They’re in the school library, where Momo used to spend her lunch hour alone and now she doesn’t. Now Sana is sitting on the floor, shoes kicked off, hair tied up because she says it helps her think.

Sunlight is squared across the carpet. Momo rubs her hand over and over it again until her nerves go numb.

“You haven’t been passing your sync tests,” Sana says casually, or as casually as she can. They’re on the train.

The right train.

“Yeah, it’s weird.” Momo is peeling two clementines in her lap. Her fingernails are stained orange.

“Is something.” Sana smacks her lips. The ruins of Tokyo-III are rushing past them. “Wrong?”

“I don’t think so. It’s just—“ It’s hard to explain to Sana. She’s always had an abnormally high sync rate, an eye of the hurricane calm around her heart. Momo has never seen her dip below a 40%.

It’s a delicate balance, though. At 40, the body inside the EVA will begin to feel the exact same sensations the unit does. If an Angel whips them, bites them, sinks its claws into the unit, then the pilot feels it too. She’s heard the screams before, and only hours later realized they were from her own throat.

It’s odd to experience pain but never have anything to prove it. Never bleed. Never have a scar to point to and say this is where it hurts. This is where you should kiss me.

“You can always tell me,” Sana says. She is looking out the window.

“If I knew what it was, I would.”

It doesn’t feel like a lie.

There are some things Momo can’t understand.

Why the Angels keep coming, sprouting again and again in the sky like heads of a hydra.

Why the world ended but she’s still here.

Why Sana and Nayeon are insisting she go to high school graduation.

“It’s stupid.” She’s trying to pout because it usually works, but Sana is turned away, looking in the mirror while she fiddles with her uniform. Afternoon sun is blaring through the window.

“Tell me the real reason.”

Momo pulls a pillow over her head. “It’s just stupid.”

“Momoring, this is pitiful.” Fingers dance over her stomach, poking and prodding a little too firm to tickle. “Get dressed.”

“Do it for me,” Momo dares. Something thrills in her when Sana pinches the bottom button on her pajama shirt, twisting it free. Something thrills and then gets heavy because Sana is looking at her with those yellow-light eyes, asking—

_Do you really want to try?_

_Do you really think you can make it?_

It’s like fear, the thing in Momo’s chest, because it’s so fast. It’s like excitement because it’s so bright. “Yeah,” she says. It’s the end of the world and Sana has always been kind. Sana has always been sacrificially, patiently, maddeningly kind.

“Okay,” Sana whispers, maybe to herself. Her fingers hardly tremble as they twist button after button, all the way up to Momo’s collar. There’s a stripe of skin where the pajamas part and Momo knows that her chest is rising and falling as if she’s been running.

And she has.

Sana licks her lips, her gaze politely diverted to the side of the bed. “What’s next?”

“Pants I guess.”

Momo lifts her hips when Sana hooks her fingers around the waistband, pulling down past her knees and then her ankles. Sana tosses them into the hamper at the edge of the bed.

“Can I,” Sana drifts off, hand hovering over the shirt again.

It’s the kind of trust needed for open heart surgery, watching Sana peel away the shirt from her shoulders, pull it from beneath her back and throw it away, make it meaningless.

The air in the room is cold. Momo thinks maybe she should cover herself now, fold her arms over her chest. But she wants Sana to see her. She wants to be brave enough to ask if she’s pretty like this. Laid out. Defenseless. It’s enough to make her shiver. 

Sana is flushing from her cheeks to her neck, redness sinking down beneath the white collar of her school dress. The geography of their bodies on the bed changes, continents detaching as Sana leans back on her heels, turns her face away.

“The uniform,” Momo reminds her, lifting her arms, hugging herself tightly.

Sana exhales. “Right.”

When she gets up off the bed, Momo pulls a blanket over herself, rolling over and listening to the rustling of Sana in her closet. Rain clatters against the window.

A clean blue dress is tossed over.

“You need to get dressed,” Sana says, small. “Nayeon will be mad if we’re late.”

“Is that—“ Something constricts in Momo’s throat. “Are you okay?”

Because she wants Sana to ask if she’s okay.

“I’m fine.”

Momo knows Sana is ashamed because she’s seen it in a mirror before.

Nayeon brings three bouquets to the ceremony. It’s easy to spot her in the auditorium, disposable camera firing off randomly, wearing a red leather jacket in a sea of suits and prim kimonos. 

After all the speeches, she makes Sana, Mina, and Momo line up on the school’s front steps, cowering under their umbrellas.

“Smile this time,” she scolds.

Sana’s hand touches the small of Momo’s back, then quickly retreats.

Momo forces the corners of her mouth up.

“Look like you mean it,” Nayeon orders before the flash.

Nayeon asks who wants to go to dinner. Mina, as always, politely declines. Sana shifts uncomfortably, picking at the petals in her bouquet. “I think I’ll just go home too.”

The captain throws an arm over Momo’s shoulder. She shrinks into the embrace. “Looks like it’s just you and me.”

Momo doesn’t really feel like dinner but she especially doesn’t feel like being alone. Nayeon is always a good distraction.

“Is Jeongyeon coming,” Momo asks as they’re driving. Nayeon is wearing her sunglasses even though it’s raining.

“Nope.” Her jaw is set stubbornly.

“Sorry.”

That, at least, makes Nayeon’s hands slacken around the steering wheel. “What are you sorry for?” She reaches across the dash, lightly slapping Momo’s still hands. “It’s a bad habit to apologize for things that aren’t your fault.”

Momo just barely stops another sorry from coming out.

“So how does it feel? Officially an adult. The world is your oyster and all that.”

They pass a crumpled factory. An Angel’s blood is splattered like graffiti against the concrete.

“I feel the same,” Momo says.

“Well, that’ll change.” Nayeon pulls down her sunglasses so she can wink. “What did you wanna be when you were a kid?”

_Not here._

“I dunno.” Momo fiddles with her seatbelt strap. “Probably something dumb.”

“You’re one of the most important people on Earth.” Nayeon says it so simply, so seriously. Momo knows she just means because she pilots an EVA. She would say the same thing to Sana or Mina if they were sitting here instead.

The restaurant isn’t crowded, and Nayeon picks a booth near the back. She orders for both of them, not even glancing at the menu.

They talk about office politics for a little bit. It takes a lot of careful conversational guesswork for Momo to avoid any question that could lead to the inevitable Jeongyeon conclusion. They talk about the TV shows they used to watch together. At a low point, Nayeon descends into complaining about the weather until she interrupts herself with a laugh. “When did we get awkward, Momo?”

“Ah.” Momo plays with her chopsticks. “Are we?”

Nayeon dabs at her mouth with a napkin. “A little. We haven’t been spending much time together.”

“Sor— yeah.”

“Do you have a boyfriend or something?” Nayeon says the ‘or something’ like she knows. Like Momo’s eyes have been replaced with twin screens that spell it all out like the monitors in the command center.

“No. Just.” Momo isn’t sure what to say. She was happy and then she wasn’t. Right now the unhappiness seems so expansive that it would be hard to describe the happiness. She’d have to strain her eyes to see it again. “Been focusing on school.”

“Your grades are abysmal. They still send me your report cards.” Nayeon raises a shot glass wobbling with sake. “But not anymore!”

They’re driving home when Nayeon brings up Jeongyeon.

“You’ll work it out,” Momo says. “You always do.”

“You know that thing about an unstoppable force and an immovable object?”

“Mhmm.”

“So you did study.” Nayeon’s fingers drum on the steering wheel. “It’s like that. She just stops me. But I don’t know if I move her. Y’know?”

But Jeongyeon loves her. Momo knows it’s true. Momo knows what it is because she’s seen it every time they went to dinner all together, every time she woke up for school and Jeongyeon and Nayeon were in the kitchen together with their hair mussed and eyes tired and smiles splitting their faces. She’s seen it in the way they argue with each other, never saying the unforgivable thing, never pushing the selfdestruct button that always waits between two people who know every corner, every hidden part of each other.

Nayeon glances in the rearview mirror as she butchers the parallel parking. “Sometimes you show yourself to someone, and you ask ‘can you love this’ and they say no.”

“Do you—“ Momo unbuckles her seatbelt. “Do you want to be alone tonight?”

The captain pinches her cheek. “Yeah.”

EVA units sync with human pilots by connecting to the A10 cell group.

“People get their doctorates in this and still don’t really understand it,” Jeongyeon is saying. She has a napkin out, pen darting over a crude diagram of a human skull. “But right here—“ She circles the absolute center— “you have all these cells soaking in dopamine. Some of your most intense memories are processed here, like of lovers or parents. That kind of thing.”

Momo has neither of those.

She wonders what Sana has, for her to connect with the EVA so perfectly. It’s an impossible question, because deeper it means why are you better than me.

It’s an impossible question because she hasn’t been talking to Sana ever since the graduation incident. Or Sana hasn’t been talking to her.

She knows that if the other girl were to come knocking at her window, if she were to make a peace offering, Momo would instantly accept it. It could be a word. It could be a canned coffee.

Every hour they don’t talk is just more proof that Sana is ashamed. That Momo took a stupid risk.

Jeongyeon is still talking, clicking the pen rapidly. “—you have to assume, if there’s a soul, it’s right there.”

When the alarms start blaring the scientist laughs.

“Speak of the devil,” she says brightly, scrunching up the napkin and tossing it toward the trash can.

She misses.

In two seconds, the NERV headquarters split into chaos. People in white coats are dashing toward the elevators. People with guns are shouting.

“I need Minatozaki and Myoui suited up in three,” Nayeon says over the comms. “Momo you can, uh. Sit this one out.”

The command center is designed like a throne room with an audience of screens.

Nayeon stands on the central balcony and she looks like a king. An in-ear microphone crown. A leather jacket for a robe.

The heat signature of the Angel stalks across the screens, a collage of electric reds and greens.

That’s how snakes see the world, Momo thinks from her chair in the corner. She’s picking at a bag of chips Nayeon keeps in the ‘Momo snack cabinet’.

“Alright, Mina, how’s it looking?”

“Fine.” It’s odd to hear Mina’s voice, boosted by speakers. The projected image of her, in the entry plug, she looks calm as ever.

“I’m good too,” Sana sings. It’s nice to look at her and not have her looking back.

“Okay, let’s uh.” Nayeon always struggles with the inspirational part of her job. “Start cooking with butter.”

Everything begins.

The EVA units shoot up into the world above.

The battle happens.

It’s louder here, at the center of the earth, than anywhere else.

Momo goes into the hall to find a vending machine.

There’s a cockroach in her apartment.

Right now it’s underneath the bed. Momo is squatting on the floor, armed with a slipper, waiting for it to scuttle out into the open again.

Nayeon wants to talk at seven and she’s just buying time, hoping for a knock at the window, hoping for anything.

She kills the cockroach.

It could have survived a nuclear winter.

Momo is unsurprised to see that Nayeon’s apartment is still a shipwreck.

“Am I here to clean?”

“Nope.” Nayeon is standing in front of the fridge. The light inside went out months ago. “You’re here to talk.”

“Oh no.”

Momo hopes for a snort but Nayeon frowns until she takes a sip of her beer. “What’s going on with you?”

“Um. Nothing?”

“Maybe that’s the problem.” Nayeon’s tank top is wrinkled. “You’re bored. You feel hopeless. You’re losing it.”

“I don’t think I’m—“

“You are.” Nayeon says it and it is suddenly true. “But think about this. Once you get your sync rate back to normal I’ll be promoted to commander.”

A bare laugh unsettles itself from Momo’s chest. There’s something charming, maybe inspirational, about Nayeon’s fake selfishness.“Does that mean you’ll—“

“I’ll still be your person.”

There are crows in the pine trees around the train station.

Momo is sitting on the bench, two empty seats between her and Sana.

Mina stands at the edge of the platform, leaning to look down the rails.

“Crows are songbirds,” she says, barely louder than the wind.

Sana’s firelight eyes flick to her, then away. “They are.”

“I don’t know anything else about crows,” Momo says, and she can’t help but make it sound like ‘I’m sorry.’

Cars cry out on the streets below them. The skyscrapers glare down.

Sana straightens. “I would run across an ocean to tie your shoes.”

The train hisses into the station like a 20,000 ton snake.

Momo sits in the entry plug for her EVA unit, fingers drumming on the controls.

“Okay.” Nayeon’s voice is too loud in her ear. “Let’s get something better than a 15%, yes?”

The screens light to life.

The EVA groans.

“Okay, holding at 20,” Jeongyeon says. “Almost at 21.”

“Happy thoughts,” Nayeon coos.

Momo shuts her eyes, breathes slowly through her nose, out through her mouth.

Rain in the summer.

Stormcloud choruses.

The church in the ruins of Tokyo-III.

“Okay, a steady 24.2.”

“Momo can do better.”

“We shouldn’t—“

Momo tries to think of something loud.

The radio in Nayeon’s car, the bass blown out.

A bullet.

A bomb.

“26.5. Let’s call it.”

“Momo, just a little more. I want to hit 30 today. Can you do that?”

“Okay,” Momo says, fists clenched, teeth cinched.

Rain in the summer.

Puddles at night, each holding their own moon.

Starlings flying in their secret logic at dusk.

“29.3,” Jeongyeon reports.

Sky-blue skirts.

The exact chemistry of Sana’s shampoo and conditioner and soap.

Lips on the back of her neck.

**Author's Note:**

> my fav thing about samo is that they ponder life’s great mysteries together. so this was inspired by my some of my fav lil facts 
> 
> title comes from a frank o’hara poem so i could complete the superfecta of my early 20s interests
> 
> there will be...prob two more chapters. maybe just one.
> 
> also thank u becca for saving my dumb stupid baby ass 
> 
> thank u for reading UWU


End file.
